A former financial adviser sent to prison in 2008 for buying Buckeye football tickets with bad
checks pleaded guilty to bank fraud in federal court last week, nearly a year after he was charged
with six counts of mail fraud, bank fraud and failure to file tax returns.

In 2008, Robert E. Haines Jr., 57, spent eight months in state prison after pleading guilty to
using bad checks to buy $18,000 worth of Ohio State University football tickets in 2003 and 2004.
He said at the time he thought the $100,000 he had donated to the university had paid for the
tickets.

According to a federal indictment unrelated to that case, investigators found that in 2005 and
2006, Haines operated a real-estate business, SHS Foundation, and a debt-counseling company, Debt
Freedom Foundation, as tax-exempt companies in Oregon.

He funneled personal expenses through the Debt Freedom company, placed his assets in the names
of both companies, and did not file income-tax returns for 2006 and 2007, despite making money from
both operations, the indictment says.

The companies were not tax-exempt, according to the indictment, and operated out of Haines’
former home on Lake Bluff Court on the Far North Side.

The indictment also said that Haines defrauded several lenders out of $1.3 million as part of
the purchase and sale of properties at 360 Roosevelt Ave. in Bexley; 1018 Greythorne Place on the
Far East Side; and 9444 Slough Rd. in Canal Winchester.

Three others were involved with Haines’ real-estate scheme; the indictment lists them as R.S.,
S.S. and R.B.

R.B. has been identified as Ryan K. Blankenship of Gahanna, who pleaded guilty in 2010 to his
involvement with mortgage fraud with the three properties. Blankenship, who owned Household
Mortgage Solutions in Gahanna, was sentenced to one day behind bars and ordered to pay $617,869 in
restitution on charges of bank fraud and money laundering.

If Haines’ case had gone to trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brenda S. Shoemaker planned to argue
that he was a “tax defier,” someone who repeatedly refused to pay taxes. Haines had registered his
companies as religious organizations, said he was a minister and claimed he did not have to pay
taxes because the church owned his assets, Shoemaker said in court documents.

Haines agreed to plead guilty to one count of bank fraud if he is sentenced to a three-year term
of nonreporting probation. The maximum prison sentence for the charge is 30 years. Restitution is
not specified in the agreement.

No date for sentencing has been set. If U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley decides on a
different sentence, the plea deal would be off and the case could proceed to trial.